A book and a view. Is there anything nicer? (Okay, maybe chocolate qualifies.) Image courtesy of mxruben, Morguefile.

My U.K. blogging buddy Russell over at The Top 10 of Anything and Everything constantly amazes me with his vast imagination and the variety of his blog posts. You name it, he’s probably created a Top 10 list about it.

So due to time constraints today — as well as paying some tribute to Russell, a blogger I admire very much — I’m creating my own Top 10 list dedicated to the life lessons I’ve picked up over the years from various books:

1. Sisters rock. (Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women)

2. Brothers rock. (Louisa May Alcott’s Little Men)

3. Nothing is so good as a resourceful mom and dad. (Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter and By The Shores of Silver Lake)

4. Having good friends, a sense of humor and a vivid imagination helps get you through anything. (Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables)

5. Karma often catches up with bad people. (Charles Dickens, Great Expectations)

6. Karma often catches up with good people. (Jane Austen, Persuasion)

7. Odysseus, for cryin’ out loud, get a GPS already! (Homer, The Odyssey)

8. Neighbors will surprise you. (Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird)

9. We have several public faces and private faces. (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)

And most importantly…

10. When accidentally locked with two other people in a storage room beneath the stage of one’s college theater and hollers for help go unheeded, grab the nearest tool and remove hinge pins from door to escape room. (Various authors, Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators)

17 responses to “Top 10 life lessons I learned from literature”

I always did like those books. And the reference comes from one scene where Bob and Pete are trapped in a room and Pete whips out a pocketknife to remove the pins from the door hinges. Who would’ve thought reading that would prove useful during my college years?

You have to wonder if he was dawdling on purpose and there was some other reason…normally the farther people are from home, the greater the monsters and more terrifying the adventures and who’s to contradict?